D&D 5E [GUIDE] My Word Is My Sword: The Paladin Guide

[FrogReaver]

Which means that first case cuts the raw incidents (as opposed to a mere slide along the percentage scale) of losing your concentration by 37.5%.

In that second case, it's cutting them by 60%. Pretty significant, in either case.

(Same principle as if you increase your crit chance from 5% to 10%, you are, in fact, doubling the number of crits you're getting.)

So? It's still 10% vs 4%. The point is that you get such a low chance of losing concentration anyways that you'll likely pass most of the saves anyways. The point is that there's going to be very few fights in your whole career where that +3 bonus to concentration saves actually prevented you from losing concentration.

By the time the bonus is a +4 or +5 and you are encountering enemies that can often enough do over 20 damage in a single hit then I can at least understand it's appeal. But at level 4? I don't get it.

 

[Gladius Legis]

More offense saturates the same way more defense does. If you have enough offense to safely kill the enemy then having more isn't going to make the fight any safer. However, more offense can let you face tougher enemies than you could have faced without it. That's the way in which it doesn't saturate. Defense is the same way. Once you have enough to safely kill a particular enemy then having more doesn't make that fight any safer. However, if you have more defense you can face tougher enemies than you could have faced without it.

The downside with defense is it can be bypassed simply by enemies avoiding attacking the defender.
The downside with offense is it can be bypassed simply by enemies focusing down the attacker.

This is why for any front line character I would suggest focusing on having good offense and good defense. Good offense makes it much harder to just avoid attacking you. Good defense makes it much harder to focus you down.

At early levels HAM reduces about 50% of the damage you take from goblins and other creatures like that. Against Ancient Dragons HAM reduces about 15% of the attack damage of them. As with most abilities there are some enemies its just not going to be very useful on. But on many enemies as you are leveling from 1 to 20 (and most importantly in the level 1-10 range where most people end up spending most of their game time) it has a huge impact.

Point is, defense has a saturation point that is far easier to reach. Once your AC is 20 or higher on a semi-regular basis, once you're inflicting disadvantage on attack rolls semi-constantly, once you and/or your party is constantly inflicting things like frighten, blind, poison, incapacitate, stun, paralyze, etc., etc., the extra defense from HAM isn't going to make that much of a difference at levels much higher than 5. A feat is a long-term investment, and I like things that have a higher impact throughout my character's career, not just the first 4 levels.

 

[Gladius Legis]

So? It's still 10% vs 4%. The point is that you get such a low chance of losing concentration anyways that you'll likely pass most of the saves anyways. The point is that there's going to be very few fights in your whole career where that +3 bonus to concentration saves actually prevented you from losing concentration.

By the time the bonus is a +4 or +5 and you are encountering enemies that can often enough do over 20 damage in a single hit then I can at least understand it's appeal. But at level 4? I don't get it.

Losing concentration on a spell is one of those things in this game you want to minimize as much as possible, so yes, I do think it's worth it.

 

[FrogReaver]

Point is, defense has a saturation point that is far easier to reach. Once your AC is 20 or higher on a semi-regular basis, once you're inflicting disadvantage on attack rolls semi-constantly, once you and/or your party is constantly inflicting things like frighten, blind, poison, incapacitate, stun, paralyze, etc., etc., the extra defense from HAM isn't going to make that much of a difference at levels much higher than 5. A feat is a long-term investment, and I like things that have a higher impact throughout my character's career, not just the first 4 levels.

It's funny, I just realized that every condition you mentioned as a reason for diminishing HAM's importance is also an equal reason for diminishing resilient CON's importance, as anything that prevents you from being hit is another reason to not worry about concentration saves or damage reduction.

HAM is very good from level 5 to 10 as well. It isn't OMG broken like it is from level 1-4 but it's still very good there. Personally I prefer feats that start off very useful for when I take them even if by level 20 they may be lacking a little. By level 20 I think resilient con is better than HAM. It's just I don't build or think anymore about what's better at level 20. That said the whole concept of status effects like you mentioned is making me rethink the usefulness of both HAM and resilient con for the part of the game I'm interested in.

 

[FrogReaver]

Losing concentration on a spell is one of those things in this game you want to minimize as much as possible, so yes, I do think it's worth it.

I think overfocusing on something that isn't very likely to happen in the first place ignores that you are actually giving something up in order to make that unlikely event even more unlikely.

 

[Gladius Legis]

It's funny, I just realized that every condition you mentioned as a reason for diminishing HAM's importance is also an equal reason for diminishing resilient CON's importance, as anything that prevents you from being hit is another reason to not worry about concentration saves or damage reduction.

HAM is very good from level 5 to 10 as well. It isn't OMG broken like it is from level 1-4 but it's still very good there. Personally I prefer feats that start off very useful for when I take them even if by level 20 they may be lacking a little. By level 20 I think resilient con is better than HAM. It's just I don't build or think anymore about what's better at level 20. That said the whole concept of status effects like you mentioned is making me rethink the usefulness of both HAM and resilient con for the part of the game I'm interested in.

Pretty big difference though in (let's say) 25% of the enemy attacks that actually do hit even with those conditions inflicted (a) merely doing 3 less damage, or (b) having anywhere from a 10%-30% less of a chance of breaking your concentration, perhaps on the very spell you were using to boost your defense/cripple the enemy in the first place.

 

[FrogReaver]

Pretty big difference though in (let's say) 25% of the enemy hits that actually do hit even with those conditions inflicted (a) merely doing 3 less damage, or (b) having anywhere from a 10%-30% less of a chance of breaking your concentration, perhaps on the very spell you were using to boost your defense/cripple the enemy in the first place.

If I'm fighting an enemy that only has a 10% chance of hitting me and I lower it's chance of hitting me to 5% we can look at that 1 of 2 ways, you can look at that as the enemy is now doing effectively half damage or you can look at it as the enemy wasn't likely to hit me in the first place so why would I want to use whatever resource or ability I have in order to try and prevent something that probably wouldn't have happened anyways.

Both are true statements but one is more meaningful IMO. The same thing applies to your insistence on a 10% vs 4% chance to lose concentration. In fact if the enemy had disadvantage there's even less of a reason to worry about the concentration aspect as it's now even less likely your concentration is broken.

That said you have convinced me that HAM isn't worth taking as the amount of damage it prevents on you even by level 5 is likely not going to be much more than the amount of temp hp inspiring leader grants (and it grants those hemp hp to the whole party multiple times per day). I still don't think resilient con is worth taking at level 4 either but the discussion has helped me focus more on how to compare some feats I used not to be able to.

 

[Nephilm X]

More offense saturates the same way more defense does. If you have enough offense to safely kill the enemy then having more isn't going to make the fight any safer. However, more offense can let you face tougher enemies than you could have faced without it. That's the way in which it doesn't saturate. Defense is the same way. Once you have enough to safely kill a particular enemy then having more doesn't make that fight any safer. However, if you have more defense you can face tougher enemies than you could have faced without it.

The downside with defense is it can be bypassed simply by enemies avoiding attacking the defender.
The downside with offense is it can be bypassed simply by enemies focusing down the attacker.

This is why for any front line character I would suggest focusing on having good offense and good defense. Good offense makes it much harder to just avoid attacking you. Good defense makes it much harder to focus you down.

At early levels HAM reduces about 50% of the damage you take from goblins and other creatures like that. Against Ancient Dragons HAM reduces about 15% of the attack damage of them. As with most abilities there are some enemies its just not going to be very useful on. But on many enemies as you are leveling from 1 to 20 (and most importantly in the level 1-10 range where most people end up spending most of their game time) it has a huge impact.

The saturation point for offense is ending fights before the enemy gets to act. Offense investments have a nearly linear progression, too, beyond the normal class power spikes.

Defense doesn't work the same way, because player defenses have poor scaling comparing to the growth in "challenge-appropriate" enemy damage and DCs. HAM is a good example: 3 non-magical BPS damage blocking is amazing early on, but poor once you're expected to deal with magical attacks, spell damage, and individual attacks that bypass AC chunking for 20-30 damage a pop. Putting ASIs in CON is the same - you definitely want *some* CON, it's your "not dying" tax attribute after all, but going from 16 CON to 20 CON only gives you around 20% more HP to play around with, whereas say STR and PAM can boost your damage by 50% *and* help end the fight faster, saving on HP lost.

As I said, you want some defense, because if you crumple like tissue paper the moment attention is paid to you then you're a liability, but the calculus of how to spend your ASIs heavily favors offense. And the strongest defensive options for Paladins are Resilient CON, Shield Master (which competes with PAM in function), and more Charisma.

 

[Gladius Legis]

If I'm fighting an enemy that only has a 10% chance of hitting me and I lower it's chance of hitting me to 5% we can look at that 1 of 2 ways, you can look at that as the enemy is now doing effectively half damage or you can look at it as the enemy wasn't likely to hit me in the first place so why would I want to use whatever resource or ability I have in order to try and prevent something that probably wouldn't have happened anyways.

Both are true statements but one is more meaningful IMO. The same thing applies to your insistence on a 10% vs 4% chance to lose concentration. In fact if the enemy had disadvantage there's even less of a reason to worry about the concentration aspect as it's now even less likely your concentration is broken.

The difference, and I've been hinting at this all along, is the consequence. One consequence is just taking some hit point damage. The other consequence is possibly losing concentration on a spell I was counting on (and spent a spell slot on) to greatly impact the battle in my favor. One of those is clearly a more serious consequence, which makes it a consequence I will devote more attention to avoiding.

That said you have convinced me that HAM isn't worth taking as the amount of damage it prevents on you even by level 5 is likely not going to be much more than the amount of temp hp inspiring leader grants (and it grants those hemp hp to the whole party multiple times per day). I still don't think resilient con is worth taking at level 4 either but the discussion has helped me focus more on how to compare some feats I used not to be able to.

FWIW, I typically aim Resilient (CON) for Lv. 8, or if there's a more pressing priority for my build, Lv. 12. I just don't agree that it's useless at Lv. 4.

 

[Gladius Legis]

As I said, you want some defense, because if you crumple like tissue paper the moment attention is paid to you then you're a liability, but the calculus of how to spend your ASIs heavily favors offense. And the strongest defensive options for Paladins are Resilient CON, Shield Master (which competes with PAM in function), and more Charisma.

If you or your table use the updated ruling for Shield Master, it honestly kind of sucks now for both defense and offense. I'd replace that with Inspiring Leader on your list.